Republic Wireless, the potentially disruptive mobile phone carrier that uses special hybrid Wifi/cellular phones, has another plan to help spur interest and drastically reduce your phone costs. We’ve confirmed with the company that starting this week, it’s going to let its users make and receive international calls to any phone, free of charge. Well, that’s their aim anyway — read on for the details.

For those that missed our initial coverage, Republic Wireless is a subsidiary of Bandwidth.com — a company that gets relatively little attention in the mainstream press, but whose sprawling Internet infrastructure is responsible for powering portions of many of the most popular VoIP services, including Google Voice, Skype, Twilio, and others.

Republic Wireless taps into Bandwidth’s infrastructure to offer a phone carrier that’s a WiFi/cellular hybrid. After signing up (they’re currently in a limited private beta), Republic sells you a special Android phone that automatically connect to your Wifi networks whenever possible and routes your call via VoIP (which is far less expensive for them than traditional carrier minutes).

If your phone can’t find any Wifi networks to connect to, it switches over to Sprint’s mobile network. And because much of your usage will be routed over Wifi rather than a cellular connection, Republic can offer its service at a rate that’s much cheaper than the likes of Verizon or AT&T: it’s only $19 a month. There are a few caveats to that, though — namely, that you can’t use too many cellular minutes (you can find more details in our previous coverage).

Which brings us back to this week’s launch, which will allow Republic members to make and receive international calls for free. To do this, Bandwidth.com has managed to acquire its own country code (as was noticed by DSL Reports), which it will be assigning to Republic Wireless.

Republic has confirmed that free international calling is indeed what the country code is for, and that it will work similarly to the way other international calls work, just without the fees. If you initiate an international call from your phone over Wifi, it’ll be free of charge, no matter who in the world you call. And when your friends abroad want to call you, they just type in Republic’s ‘country’ code, 883-5110, followed by your phone number, and that incoming call will be free to both parties as well. Pretty simple, right?

Thing is, they’re not quite there yet — that’s how easy it will be, provided Republic Wireless can get other carriers to come on board. And this is where things might be a bit tricky.

In order for these country codes to work, they have to be recognized by the various carriers around the world. If, for example, one of your friends lives in the UK and is on Orange, and they call your Republic Wireless number, that call will only be free if Orange has opted into supporting Republic’s international code. And there’s no rule mandating these international carriers to sign on board. But there are ways to encourage it — get enough people to ask for it, and the carriers may well add Republic support.

To help get the ball rolling, Republic Wireless has managed to land some notable launch partners. Namely, Google, who is integrating support for the Republic international code into Gmail’s phone feature. And Republic Wireless says additional partners will be coming soon. In the mean time, they’ve also launched this site where carriers can sign up to support Republic’s International Country Code.

To sum things up,  at this point Republic’s free international calling isn’t going to be especially useful — your inbound international calls probably won’t be free. But that will change as it (hopefully) announces that traditional carriers have started to come onboard. I’m looking at this as a very ambitious and potentially awesome experiment (which could be said of the company in general, actually).

Because if this works out, to the point that it becomes the norm for carriers around the world to support Republic Wireless’s international code, it could really change the whole game as far as international calling is concerned. Free calls, to any phone, has a really nice ring to it.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Last week we broke the news that Bandwidth.com was launching a disruptive mobile carrier called Republic Wireless. The service will use special handsets that take advantage of Wifi networks whenever possible, and will fallback to a ‘normal’ cellular connection whenever Wifi isn’t available. A report from GigaOM pegs the price at a mere $19 per month — with unlimited text, data, and voice.

That’s massive savings compared to the standard contracts offered by Verizon, AT&T, et al. But there’s a catch: to use Republic Wireless, you need to buy a new handset (the devices are Android-based, but they use a special combination of hardware and software that can’t be ported to other devices, at least not yet). Thankfully those handsets are going to be relatively inexpensive.

Numerous tipsters have written in to say they’ve just received the following email from Republic Wireless — and we’ve just confirmed with the company — that the handsets will be $99 for anyone who uses the code ‘Welcome19′ by November 27. And that’s with no contract. After that early-signup period ends, the price will jump to $199, which is still significantly less expensive than most off-contract phones.

Initially, Republic Wireless will be using Sprint as its fallback when Wifi isn’t available, but it sounds like it’s working to offer service from other carriers as well. Here’s the email that is starting to land in some early users’ inboxes — the service’s homepage is advertising a full launch tomorrow:

Welcome to republic wireless.

So what’s it like here?

A reward for being first:
Join now, and pay $99. That’s $100 less than the normal $199 cost. You read that right. For $99 you get a new smartphone, and a whole new kind of mobile phone network.

Freedom isn’t free. It’s $19.
Almost immediately you notice what’s missing. The hefty monthly bills, the endless nickel-and-diming, the big red contracts…yes, we can hear you now. Do you hear us? With republic wireless, you pay a flat $19 a month for everything. Period.

How is that possible?
republic is a Wi-Fi network. Anything cellular can do, Wi-Fi can do better (and for less). That’s 21st Century technology. That’s also basic economics. So let’s all use Wi-Fi as much as possible.

Change the way wireless works
Decide whether to become a member now, or maybe later. Either way, like minds for evolving the industry are wanted here, today. You have thoughts to share, ideas to spread. Bring them to our forums. Keep up with us via our blog. Tell the republic what’s up.

Next stop: republicwireless.com
There’s so much more we have to show you. So visit, look around. Oh, that $99 offer we told you about? To get it, use the code welcome19 to join before November 27, 2011 at 11:59 pm ET.

Looking forward to being your new wireless network!

Yours,
republic wireless

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Talk about good timing.

Over the weekend, I wrote a post pleading with Google to please, finally, bring VoIP capabilities to Google Voice — namely, with an app for Android. The app would have some major benefits: it would let you make and receive calls over your home and work Wifi networks whenever they’re available (that means fewer dropped calls at the office, even if you’re deep inside a large building). And whenever you aren’t around Wifi, you could fall back to your carrier minutes. Unfortunately, while Google was actually working on building a VoIP-powered app for Android long ago, it shelved it, likely because it was concerned about infuriating the carriers.

But shortly after that post ran, I started hearing some whispers. Turns out I’m not the only one with the idea — there’s another big (albeit less well known) fish that’s about to make a splash. Get ready for Republic Wireless, a new mobile phone service from Bandwidth.com that will be launching on November 8, and could truly be the phone carrier you’ve always wanted.

First, a little background. If you’ve placed a call on Twilio, Skype, Google Voice, or one of myriad other services that use VoIP, there’s a very good chance that Bandwidth.com was involved. The company’s extensive VoIP infrastructure handles much of the heavy lifting for these services, and it also offers some of its own products, like Phonebooth, a premium VoIP service for businesses.

Which brings us back to Republic Wireless, which is the latest of Bandwidth’s own products. The service will essentially be a mobile virtual network operator — in other words it’s an alternative to the likes of Verizon and AT&T. And unlike devices on those carriers, it will switch between VoIP over Wifi and a normal cellular connection, depending on where you are.

The product’s homepage was recently updated with a cheeky note promising a “new kind of wireless network” on November 8th. A link at the bottom confirms that it is, indeed, made by Bandwidth.com. The rest of the site is short on details, but we have many more thanks, in part, to a slide deck the company has been showing to its internal beta testers.

Here are the basics, some of which are gleaned from the slide deck, others which come from other sources:

• The service will use what it’s calling “Hybrid Calling” — your phone will rely primarily on Wifi, whenever it’s available. And it will fall back on cell networks when you aren’t connected to Wifi.
• Users will not have to manually switch between Wifi and cellular — the phone will figure it out automatically
• The service will require users to get a new phone. I’m unclear on whether there will be multiple models available initially, but the phone runs on Android. New phones are required because the Hybrid Calling relies on both hardware and software
• The first cellular network that’s available as the fallback will be Sprint. The company is either planning, or already in the process of, signing other carriers onboard as well
• The phone will have one phone number (no swapping between numbers for VoIP/cellular)
• You’ll be able to send both calls and texts via Wifi
• We’re hearing that pricing details are still being finalized, but they’re described as being much cheaper — perhaps around half as much — than anything else available for an Android device (i.e. a smartphone) through the traditional carriers
• You won’t need to sign up for a contract, so there aren’t any termination fees. No overage fees, either.

In short, it sounds totally awesome, provided there aren’t any pitfalls we haven’t heard yet.

I’ll keep poking around for more details. In the mean time, it’s worth checking out the Republic Wireless site — if you scroll to the right, you’ll find a long photo to likely contains hints as to what to expect come November 8. I’m wondering if the phone shown below (albeit in many pieces) is what the first device on the network will look like.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch